


Radio Silence

by shreddedpatches



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coma, Feels, M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 02:48:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5030740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shreddedpatches/pseuds/shreddedpatches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim is in a coma after the fall and Sebastian can't stand the silence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Radio Silence

You look at him and he’s beautiful, even now.  Prettiest damn thing you’ve ever seen, all ivory and mahogany with those big honey eyes that you never get to see anymore because all he ever does these days is sleep.  His skin is smooth under your fingers—smooth, except for those burn scars he never explained and never will explain.  That’s fine with you.  He can keep his secrets, even when you’ve given all of yours away.

He’s quiet, and isn’t that funny, because he never used to be.  He asked questions you weren’t meant to answer and always kept the radio on and muttered to himself when he worked and hummed old disco tunes as he walked down the street.  At first, you thought he was just addicted to the sound of his own voice.  It wasn’t until later that you realized he was scared of the silence.

He’s quiet, his breathing slow and mechanical.  Now you’re the one that hates the silence, and when you visit, you fill the room with your own useless babble, talking about things you know he finds boring because if he wasn’t bored he would wake up and he won’t ever do that, will he.

The heart monitor beeps again and you think you see him flinch but you know it’s a trick of your desperate mind and you hate your hopeful heart for speeding up because hoping never got you anywhere with him.

You never told him that you love him because he wouldn’t let you.  You never told him that you loved him, but you said it in other ways—whispered it into his mouth when you kissed him, soft and deep, and he looked at you, amused, asking if his tiger was getting mushy on him because if so he’d have to find a replacement.  And you traced the letters of the secret words into his back when he pressed his face into your chest and shivered with the leftover fear from another nightmare, and you looked at him with eyes that bled love and you knew he had to know and you were scared that he did and scared that he didn’t.

You knew he didn’t love you.  Knew; thought.  It’s all the same.  There were moments—however brief—when he would tuck his head close to your neck and let out a sob and you could swear you were his lifeline.  Then you blinked and it was over. 

At any rate, you know now that he didn’t love you.  It wouldn’t have ended like this if he did.

Sometimes you stare at him and wonder if it’s your fault.  If he needed to hear he was loved despite how he insisted that he didn’t and you fell down on the job and now he’s asleep in a hospital bed and isn’t going to wake up.  If you could have stopped the bullet with three words.  You stare at him and think he had to have been stronger than that, but then you remember that you’re staring at a comatose man in a hospital bed and you realize that maybe he wasn’t after all.  And maybe you could have saved him and maybe you couldn’t have and it doesn’t matter now but the thought won’t leave your head.

You want to kiss him.  He tasted like whiskey and sadness and sin and you loved it.  If you kissed him now, he’d taste like teeth that haven’t been brushed in six months, but you wouldn’t care because it would be him. 

It doesn’t matter anyway.  There’s a mask over his mouth that’s keeping him alive, helping him breathe.  And there’s a hole in his stomach helping him eat. 

And you’re not helping him do anything anymore because you’re useless so all you do is sit next to him and hold his hand and talk about nothing while the nurses give you strange looks that you ignore because who gives a shit about them anyway.  And you love him.  Love him so much that it’s breaking you and the thing is it doesn’t even matter because in the end it wasn’t enough.

You don’t know what to do, because he’s the one that gave the orders, not you, so you look at him and wait for a command that won’t come.

You look at him and you hate yourself.  You hate yourself for every time you ever yelled at him or ignored him or complained about the damn Sherlock Holmes thing, and you hate yourself for not yelling and complaining more because maybe if you had, he would have understood that you cared and he wouldn’t have shot himself in the head.  You hate yourself for not kissing him good morning and good night, for rolling your eyes, for all the times that you could have held him and didn’t.  You hate yourself for just letting him do whatever he wanted but you hate yourself for always holding him back.  You just—you did something wrong and you don’t know what it was but fucking hell, you’re sorry and you hate yourself for it.

You don’t know.  God, you just don’t know. 

And when you go home you leave the radio on and you mutter to yourself and ask him questions that he isn’t able to answer and when you fall asleep at night, you say his name.


End file.
